Fiber optic networks offer significant advantages over conventional transmission media such as copper wire or other electrical transmission means. First of these is the bandwidth of a single channel (which can be greater than 1010 bits per second). The second is that the photonic systems can concurrently carry a multiplicity of such channels, each using a distinct wavelength of light. As of the date of this patent application, systems with 80 or more wavelengths have been commercially deployed, and laboratory successes lead to predictions of 100,000 or more deployed wavelengths.
A major challenge in the design of data transmission systems is the allocation of channel capacity to user traffic. The traditional technique developed by telecommunications companies is the use of “Add-Drop Multiplexers” or ADMs, which compose channels into a larger channel (multiplexing) and decompose channels from the larger capacity channel into their constituent parts. This technique is well-suited to single channels of high capacity, as it fills the capacity with a plurality of traffic from lower capacity channels.
The availability of a large number of such channels on a single fiber could lead to two scenarios. In one, multiple static multiplexing hierarchies are borne by the photonic transmission system, one per channel. This is the situation today, to first order. The agility of the system, independent of what it is capable of technically (the wavelength reassignment time) is limited here by the management scheme used for traffic engineering.
The second scenario is one where a traditional multiplexing hierarchy is not imposed—rather, the lambdas are managed to serve the needs of user traffic as it arises. This differs from the previous scenario in both the pace of adaptation, and the motivations for wavelength allocation. Simply put, the driver is neither (although it could be any thresholding function as disclosed here) revenue thresholds nor negotiated customer service level agreements. Rather, it is user needs driving allocation, at as fine a granularity as allowed by the engineering of the photonic systems and their retuning/reallocation capabilities.
The disclosed Multiple Independent Color Architecture (MICA) automates the allocation and deallocation of channels in a WDM fiber system based on user behavior and the characteristics of user traffic. In doing so, it automates a manual, slow and expensive allocation process, giving a system which is more responsive, makes better use of fiber capacity, better connects fiber capabilities to user needs, and reduces operational costs.